“Own your worth… because you’re worth it.”
It is a message beauty brands and self-help gurus love to sell. They offer a path paved with affirmations, yoga, green smoothies, and mindful meditation.
In essence, many of them teach you to treat your difficult feelings as problems to be solved/avoided, not as signals to be heard.
(After all, telling you to sit with your emotions isn’t exactly going to sell more courses or make up, is it?)
I’ll be the first to say it: I love a good green smoothie. I’m a devoted yogi. These practices have their place.
But this “clean” version of self-worth they sell you? It can be a trap.
It tells you to bypass the very emotions that are trying to protect you. It teaches you to treat your anger and resentment as obstacles, not as crucial messages to be HEARD.
I hate to break it to you: Feeling better is NOT the same as building self-worth.
Why Anger and Self-Worth (and Other Difficult Emotions) Come Hand in Hand
The truth is, the authentic path to owning your value is not always peaceful. It is about looking into the parts of yourself you’ve been taught to bury.
And a lot of times, it is walking straight through the fire.
When you truly decide to stop settling, don’t expect peace. That is welcomed, of course, but the first thing that shows up is usually a wave of emotions you have been trained to be ashamed of.
Anger: It simmers quietly at first. It is the heat that rises in your chest when you recall the joke made at your expense that you laughed off, the promotion you were passed over for, the needs you consistently placed second. This anger is not irrational; it is a direct response to the countless times your boundaries were crossed, and you didn’t have the tools, or the courage, to defend them.
Rage: This is the big one. The one we are most terrified of. It is not just a fleeting irritation, but a roaring, gut-wrenching firestorm. And crucially, this rage is often not directed primarily at others. Its most potent form is turned inward—a rage that you did not advocate for yourself sooner. A rage that you allowed your time, your energy, your love, and your truth to be discounted.
Stuckness: This is the heavy, frustrating feeling of being trapped in the same old patterns. You know you deserve better, but things seem to be moving very slow. You may be in the void, where you have said goodbye to the old, but have not seen what the “new” is like yet. So you feel stuck…
Why the Anger We Were Taught to Repress is Our Most Honest Guide
A lot of us were taught that anger is unbecoming, that rage is hysterical, and that these emotions are destructive.
So, we swallow them. We numb them.
We repress them in the name of being “nice” or “easy-going.”
But this repression is what truly destroys us. It erodes our sense of self from the inside out.
What if we reframed these not as destructive forces, but as the most honest guides we have?
That anger is a signal. It is the undeniable, roaring proof that you know, on a soul-deep level, that you deserve so much more.
It is your inner self SCREAMING in protest against the confines of a too-small box.
It is the absolute refusal to accept crumbs when you know you are worthy of more.
AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, the goal is NOT to live in a state of perpetual anger. The goal is to listen to it, to honor its message, and to let it become the fuel for your reconstruction.
The Alchemy of Anger: How to Forge Boundaries, Self-Respect, and Unshakable Standards
That surge when someone interrupts you? That’s your fuel to say, “I’m not done talking.”
The resentment from doing all the work? That’s the power for your “No. I can’t take that on.”
Stop seeing these feelings as something to manage. Start seeing them as data.
Your anger is literally telling you where your boundaries are.
Every time you listen to it and set a boundary, you are building self-respect.
And that clarity tells you exactly what to keep in your life and what to cut out.
It gives you the guts to walk away from what’s holding you back.
This is NOT about positive thinking.
It is about building a life where you don’t have to feel so angry all the time because you have finally started respecting yourself.
Your self-worth is not found in a perfectly curated life where difficult emotions are glossed over. It is not the prize you get for being “good” and agreeable.
Your self-worth is built in the middle of it.
Constructed in your anger, solidified in your stuckness, and refined by your rage.
So the next time you feel that heat rising, don’t run. Don’t suppress it.
Take a deep breath and listen.
It is not the end of you. It is the beginning of the self you were always meant to become.
x
Lana
P.S. You can watch the FULL VIDEO here.
- Have you experienced this “righteous rage” as a catalyst for change?
- What’s one boundary that your anger helped you finally set?
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